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You are over complicating things. Downtown in New Orleans Speak is downriver from Canal. The rest just depends on who you asking.
Like most cities, NOLA has a Greater Downtown Area
New Orleans Greater Downtown Area consists of Downtown/French Quarter, the Medical District, The Warehouse / Convention District and the CBD. You could also add the Sports District. Some throw in Treme and Marigny.
In the end, Downtown is whatever people want to call it
I spent the summer of 1977 selling dictionaries door-to-door in Mid-City New Orleans; I stayed with a family who lived in Ponchartrain Park and took the bus into the city center.
It was there that I learned that people referred to the "uptown lake" corner of an intersection the way we would say "northwest corner" here in Philadelphia. Yes, Canal Street is the reference point as Market Street (but not Broad) is here, and the streets that cross it have addresses "south" and "north".
Maybe I was being too detailed in my explanation, though, because your second sentence recaps what I sand about "uptown" and "downtown."
And your last sentence is definitely true. But I think there is a site out there that measures "downtown" population densities by using the city hall as the origin point for the concentric circles it draws. This IMO makes sense because in most cities, the city hall is located in the "downtown."
I spent the summer of 1977 selling dictionaries door-to-door in Mid-City New Orleans; I stayed with a family who lived in Ponchartrain Park and took the bus into the city center.
It was there that I learned that people referred to the "uptown lake" corner of an intersection the way we would say "northwest corner" here in Philadelphia. Yes, Canal Street is the reference point as Market Street (but not Broad) is here, and the streets that cross it have addresses "south" and "north".
Maybe I was being too detailed in my explanation, though, because your second sentence recaps what I sand about "uptown" and "downtown."
And your last sentence is definitely true. But I think there is a site out there that measures "downtown" population densities by using the city hall as the origin point for the concentric circles it draws. This IMO makes sense because in most cities, the city hall is located in the "downtown."
True, but it's also true that in a lot of case City Hall is on the fringe of downtowns. In New Orleans it isn't technically in Downtown or the CBD.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but City Hall is on the fringe of the financial district. But defining Downtown is super odd there too.
San Francisco, LA, Dallas, city Hall is all on the fringe. So I am always iffy about using racial population around city hall as a measure of downtown since in a lot of cases a huge chunk of the pie isn't downtown at all.
It is still useful as a measure of the the center of the city but as a measure of downtown... I wouldn't use it in many cases to find a radial around downtown specifically. For New Orleans I would choose that flashy Walgreens on Canal. Or if I'm being really specific I would probably go with Tropical Isle.
True, but it's also true that in a lot of case City Hall is on the fringe of downtowns. In New Orleans it isn't technically in Downtown or the CBD.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but City Hall is on the fringe of the financial district. But defining Downtown is super odd there too.
San Francisco, LA, Dallas, city Hall is all on the fringe. So I am always iffy about using racial population around city hall as a measure of downtown since in a lot of cases a huge chunk of the pie isn't downtown at all.
It is still useful as a measure of the the center of the city but as a measure of downtown... I wouldn't use it in many cases to find a radial around downtown specifically. For New Orleans I would choose that flashy Walgreens on Canal. Or if I'm being really specific I would probably go with Tropical Isle.
You raise a very salient point here, and I would note in response that Philadelphia may well be the statistical outlier in this department for two reasons:
1) the city's "downtown" is very well defined and agreed upon; it's the boundaries of the original 1682 Town/1701 City of Philadelphia
2) the city hall sits on the center square of the five contained in Thomas Holme's plan for that town.
If you ask 1,000 people to define "Downtown Seattle" you'll get 1,000 variations. Hell, I'd give a different answer from one moment to the next.
I'd also give different answers for Philly even if most people have one idea in mind. It generally wouldn't include Society Hill for example, but I might add the art museum (or its steps) despite the common opposition.
If you ask 1,000 people to define "Downtown Seattle" you'll get 1,000 variations. Hell, I'd give a different answer from one moment to the next.
I'd also give different answers for Philly even if most people have one idea in mind. It generally wouldn't include Society Hill for example, but I might add the art museum (or its steps) despite the common opposition.
The generally accepted definition of "downtown" Philadelphia — that word, btw, is never used to describe it; locals call it "Center City" — includes all of the residential belt between Walnut and South streets. (South Street, originally Cedar, is the southern border of the 1682 Town/1701 City of Philadelphia. Its northern border is Vine Street, which puts the Ben Franklin Parkway beyond Logan Circle outside Center City.
It's because of that residential belt plus the residential neighborhood of Logan Square in the northwest quadrant that Philadelphia has the third largest downtown residential population in the country, after New York and Chicago.
I guess what I'm saying here is, why omit Society Hill and leave in Wash West, Rittenhouse Square and Fitler Square? I'd say either that they're all in or they're all out.
....Third largest if you include a bunch of areas many wouldn't consider "downtown" even if they're in Center City.
San Francisco could make a similar claim. It's all about the boundaries you choose.
FWIW, according to the Center City District, 69,088 people lived in the four ZIP codes that lie entirely within the boundaries of Center City (19102, 19103, 19106, 19107) as of the 2020 census.
Were this a city of its own, it would be Pennsylvania's seventh-largest, after Bethlehem and ahead of Lancaster. (I'm a huge fan of Lancaster, one of the coolest small cities on the entire East Coast if not the country.)
The four postal districts omit some Center City territory to boot. Their southern boundaries are at Pine Street, two blocks north of the original Philadelphia city border at South (nee Cedar) Street. (They do, however, conform to the rhyming mnemonic for Center City's borders: "river to river and Vine to Pine.")
The CCD also includes the four ZIP codes bordering these (19123, 19130, 19146, 19147) as "extended Center City," stretching from Girard Avenue on the north to Tasker Street on the south. This area had a population of 203,484 in 2020 — it would have been the state's third-largest city, between Pittsburgh and Allentown. (The remainder of the city would still be the state's largest city.)
For most of the years I lived in Center City (1983-2011), I lived in the part that wasn't in the Center City ZIP codes: an apartment building on Camac Street just below Pine that was created from a former stable when the half-block including it was redeveloped as housing in the mid-1960s. My ex and I moved from this building in 19147 and Washington Square West into one in the same neighborhood but in ZIP code 19107 in 2000.
Edited to add: Most cities I know of include some predominantly or exclusively residential territory in the area they call "downtown." Even if we define "downtown" as synonymous with "central business district," I know of no CBD with a residential population of 0 or no strictly or predominantly residential district at all.
Last edited by MarketStEl; 12-14-2023 at 11:23 PM..
Edited to add: Most cities I know of include some predominantly or exclusively residential territory in the area they call "downtown." Even if we define "downtown" as synonymous with "central business district," I know of no CBD with a residential population of 0 or no strictly or predominantly residential district at all.
This is a standard CD fallacy. Cities don't "define" their downtowns. They only divide areas for planning and administration. I continue to be amazed at the idea that any government would decide to define an all-encompassing "official" set of boundaries outside their specific purposes. This doesn't happen.
As for housing, obviously it's a big part of any good downtown. But my personal definition of any greater bid-city downtown tends to start with buildings around five stories. Not three-story rowhouses, particularly in a city where those are everywhere.
As for housing, obviously it's a big part of any good downtown. But my personal definition of any greater bid-city downtown tends to start with buildings around five stories. Not three-story rowhouses, particularly in a city where those are everywhere.
So you wouldn't consider the downtowns of Charleston, Savannah or New Orleans downtowns?
Or do you not consider them big?
I think they are better downtown material than some of the bigger cities with open gashes in the downtown fabric
This is a standard CD fallacy. Cities don't "define" their downtowns. They only divide areas for planning and administration. I continue to be amazed at the idea that any government would decide to define an all-encompassing "official" set of boundaries outside their specific purposes. This doesn't happen.
As for housing, obviously it's a big part of any good downtown. But my personal definition of any greater bid-city downtown tends to start with buildings around five stories. Not three-story rowhouses, particularly in a city where those are everywhere.
The distinction you make is semantic.
When you draw boundaries for an area, you are "defining" what that territory is. And I know of no planning department that does not draw boundaries on a map to determine a planning district or administrative area.
I will grant that the boundaries drawn by the planning department may not comport with what residents may regard as a given territory — there's a neighborhood near me here in Northwest Philadelphia whose residents say they live in neighborhood X but which many outsiders say lies outside said neighborhood; the origin of the discrepancy begins with a developer who built houses on the site of a former golf course and gave his development a name that included neighborhood X, but outsiders, including some of those in the older part of that neighborhood, call it by the name of the former golf course — but we are still dealing with boundaries and territories, and both of those are "defined".
You'd have a problem with your criterion in Boston as well, where Beacon Hill — on which the Massachusetts State House sits — is considered a downtown neighborhood. Ditto Savannah's Historic District. Also: most of the townhouses in Rittenhouse Square have four stories, and you won't find two-story rowhouses anywhere in Center City while they're as common as, or in some places more common than, three-story ones in the outlying neighborhoods to the north and west of the city center.
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